Visionary was bullish on the magic of Vegas and MGM

LAS VEGAS - Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, 98, an eighth-grade dropout who built Las Vegas' biggest hotels, tried to take over Chrysler, and bought and sold MGM at a profit three times, died Monday night in Beverly Hills.

The reserved, unpretentious Mr. Kerkorian spent much of his life trying to stay out of the spotlight and rarely gave interviews. He called himself a "small-town boy who got lucky."

He shunned glitzy Hollywood parties and movie premieres in favor of making deals. Rather than arriving at an event by limousine, he often drove himself in a Mercury station wagon.

"He was a very private guy who shunned the limelight, both in a business way and from a charitable standpoint," said Patty Glaser, his attorney of four decades.

After making his first fortune ferrying gamblers to Las Vegas with Trans International Airlines, he built the 30-story, 1,568-room International Hotel, the world's largest hotel when it opened in the late 1960s. He brought Elvis Presley to perform there in 1969 as the rock legend relaunched his live performance career.

Although medium-size by today's Sin City standards, the hotel, now the Westgate Las Vegas, represented a major risk when most properties averaged 250 rooms.

"I had total confidence or I wouldn't have gone into the project," Mr. Kerkorian said later. "I've always been bullish on Las Vegas."

When Mr. Kerkorian opened the first MGM Grand in Las Vegas in the 1970s, it was again the world's largest hotel, containing more than 2,000 rooms and a 1,200-seat showroom. Years later, he would build another MGM Grand, this one with more than 5,000 rooms - again, the world's largest.

"He built the rooms and attractions to bring an incredibly broad base of affluent people to Las Vegas," Hal Rothman, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, once said. (Rothman died in 2007.)

Elsewhere, Mr. Kerkorian bought and sold the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio three times, each time realizing a profit on his investment. He also invested heavily in the auto industry and made unsuccessful attempts to take over Chrysler.

"Regardless of what people think, there was no great master plan," Mr. Kerkorian once said. "Every year was a big year for me. First I was simply trying to earn enough to get something to eat, then enough to buy a car."

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said on the Senate floor Tuesday that "when history books are written, they'll say a lot about this good man."

Kerkor Kerkorian was born in Fresno, Calif., in 1917, one of four children of a poor Armenian fruit grower.

During a brief boxing career, he became Pacific amateur welterweight champion. But he lacked the size to turn pro, so he went into business. During World War II, he worked for the RAF Air Transport Command in Canada, flying Mosquito bombers on dangerous delivery runs from Canada to Scotland.

By 1970, he had working control of MGM and began a more than 30-year run of deals involving the historic studio. In 2004, he agreed to sell the studio and its lucrative library of post-1986 films to Sony Corp., Comcast and other investors for about $3 billion.

In Las Vegas, he opened the 5,005-room MGM Grand Hotel and Casino and went on to orchestrate the $6.4 billion merger between MGM Grand and Steve Wynn's Mirage Resorts Inc.

Mr. Kerkorian set his sights on the auto industry in 1995, trying to seize control of Chrysler Corp. in a failed $23 billion hostile bid. It failed, but Kerkorian's Beverly Hills-based Tracinda Corp. became Chrysler's largest shareholder.